Girls, Episode 5: "One Man's Trash"
Last night's episode of Girls was... interesting. It was well-written and superbly acted. In fact, this may have been Lena Dunham's finest half hour. When it comes time to submit episodes for Emmy consideration this is the one that she should chose. It showcased a lot of what makes Hannah such a complex, flawed, and realistic character. She also had a major epiphany. This, for me, is maybe one of the best episodes in the show's short run. The only flaw in the episode is how unrealistic the whole situation is.
The premise of the episode is relatively simple. A man comes into Grumpy's and tells manager, Ray, that he believes one of his employees is dumping the coffee shop's trash in his trash cans. Ray flips out and the man played by Patrick Wilson takes off. Hannah takes this as an opportunity to quit Grumpy's citing hostile work environment. Hannah follows him to his home and he invites her in. She hesitates for a moment, but ends up going in because he lives in a brownstone. This is where it starts to get really unbelievable. It's hard to believe that neurotic Hannah would just go into this stranger's house all will nilly. Once inside, Hannah admits to him that she is the one that was putting the garbage in his trash can, as part of some passive aggressive revenge against Ray. Hannah starts to leave, but she impulsively makes out with the man and they have sex. Afterwards, Hannah learns that his name is Joshua. Not Josh. Don't you dare call him Josh!!
Joshua is very charismatic and Hannah falls under his spell pretty easily. They end up having dinner and as Hannah goes to leave Joshua asks her to say. She convinces him to beg her to stay and he does it! The whole evening is very surreal and you can sort of see this change come over Hannah. She takes a shower and stays in the steam so long that she passes out. Joshua comes in and pulls her out.
After she gets out of the shower, Hannah has her epiphany. She realizes that she wants to happy. It is a big deal. For so long, Hannah has been doing these things to have "experiences" so that she can be a good writer, but that isn't really what she wants. She wants to be happy. The play of emotions on Lena Dunham's face as she comes to this realization and verbalizes it are awesome. She is obviously having a profound moment in her life and Dunham sells it with ever part of her. Patrick Wilson is also pretty phenomenal in this episode too. As Hannah has this realization/meltdown, Joshua comes to his own realization. It seems like he has had this fantasy, of being with a younger woman, but as Hannah rambles, he is confronted with the reality of being with someone who isn't fully formed. The audience also knows, if they didn't before, that this relationship isn't going to go any further.
Hannah wakes up the next morning and Joshua is gone. She has some toast, reads the paper and leaves. This episode was great (again, once you get past the basic premise). It is melancholy and kind of serious and there is some significant growth on Hannah's part, which was cool. I know that some people's major criticism of the show is that the ladies don't seem to grow. I'll be interested to see whether or not this carries over to the next episode or if it is just forgotten.
So, obviously, I am in love with this episode. How about you guys?
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